


Tale, Theorem, Promise, Plea

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Community: sga_flashfic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-27
Updated: 2008-03-27
Packaged: 2017-10-11 22:45:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/117974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four mothers, four children, two galaxies; a team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tale, Theorem, Promise, Plea

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Dogeared for betaing!

**one**

Aashan did not wish to be pregnant – saw in her body the subtle rounding of breast and belly that promised greater changes to come, and was terrified.

"I cannot," she whispered to herself, tears caught and held at the back of her throat, hand splayed beneath her navel as she picked a path along the forest trails she had known since childhood. "I cannot. I _cannot_." And she hurried as if there were someone other than herself to hear the words; as if the ache in her heart could be outrun.

She found blue-petaled Hishna by the pools at the foot of the Marnan hills, green leaves spread wide in supplication beneath the sunlight filtering through the canopy above. The words of other women were a soft, welcome murmur in her mind as she bent with a well-used gutting knife in her hand, following the supple stem of a Hishna to its base. There were two seed pods to sever and claim – five kernels to cup in her hand when she parted the husks with her fingers. She rolled the seeds in the palm of her hand and saw the Wraith in their milk-pale skin.

"I cannot," she whispered again, and shuddered at the sense-memory of her dreams, of the terrible awakening she had seen, that she had _triggered_ if her nightmares were to be believed. She shook her head, swallowed against the vision of her own copper hair, a daughter's inheritance, and a culling that would wake the hordes, call down ruin on her people. The Hishna seeds glinted in her hand – she knew that no one would fault her, that other women had made the choice to keep their children from such a painful world. Yet she thought of Tagan's hands on her body, their tent without the blessing of a child's carefree laughter, and all she could do was crumple beneath the contradictions thrumming in her blood.

*****

She delivered a child six months later – a daughter, determined to fight her way into the world. Aashan held her at her breast as the midwives did their work, as they pressed at her belly and delivered her of her child's last home. Hungry, exhausted, she traced a finger over perfect lips, a tiny nose. "What have I done?" she asked, kissing her daughter's forehead. "Teyla. Teyla." And at last, she cried.

 **two**

 _Inconceivable_ , thought Elspeth McKay, hands folded in her lap, sensible pocketbook set by the side of her chair; it was only by grace and the full application of her considerable will that she didn't laugh hysterically in Dr. Bradshaw's face. "Pregnant?" she repeated, thanking her stars she'd told Harold to stay home. "Not an ulcer, then?" It had been a long-shot, she supposed, her self-diagnosis of digestive distress, but there was a long and violent history of gastrointestinal trouble in both her and Harold's family line, and an ulcer wasn't really so much more implausible than the idea that the pills in her soft-pink compact really _did_ only work 99% of the time.

"Pregnant," said Dr. Bradshaw. "You're to be congratulated!"

"Yes, well. Of course," Elspeth said, and barely comprehended the doctor's instructions to change into a gown so that they could undertake her first pre-natal exam.

*****

"Pregnant?" Harold said, fish stick halfway to his mouth that evening at dinner.

"Definitely."

"So the nausea?"

"Not an ulcer," Elspeth sighed. "It's rather humiliating. Stephen had ulcers in _high school_ and the most I've been able to work up to is a pregnancy by 27? My parents will throw the most awful fit and tell me I'm content to be an underachiever, again. You've heard that story often enough."

Harold nodded, chewing thoughtfully. "Perhaps there's a way to incorporate this into Henderson's research on early-childhood IQ. He's been thinking of experimentation before birth as a means of . . . . although what his control group would be . . ."

Elspeth waved a hand. "I really can't be trekking to and from his lab on a whim every week. I have far too much to do if I'm to complete the theorem before I . . . " She made a sweeping gesture toward her belly as if to suggest the process of giving birth. "Plus we really must give consideration to where we're going to _put_ the child."

"We could – " Harold screwed up his face. "Well we definitely can't move the telescope without disrupting the – "

"No, or the music room. The climate controls we need for the cello are . . ."

"And I need my office space. A man's office is – "

"Well you needn't think I'm giving up _my_ office so that – "

Harold waved his fork. "The attic's a possibility if I hire a graduate student to make some sense out of all the filing we've let lapse. I'm not sure what the going rate is these days but . . . "

"No heat up there," Elspeth pointed out. "And I'll be delivering in winter."

"Ah. Right." Harold speared three peas. "Perhaps we'll have to move."

Elspeth set down her cutlery. "It really is the most dreadful inconvenience," she muttered to herself.

*****

Yet pregnancy was, Elspeth found, as fascinating as the equations that littered the kitchen table or the sound she could coax from polished wood and strings. It surprised her – no, _shocked_ her to discover that she enjoyed the changes to which her body lay claim; the ache in her joints and the stretch of muscles; a shifting sense of gravity and a shortening of breath. She catalogued it all with an ordered mind, but intellect alone couldn't explain her excitement when the child within her quivered to life, hand and foot pushing into her belly, poking her hard and making her gasp.

"Our child is moving," she crowed to Harold at dinner.

He frowned at her over the newspaper. "I suppose that's what they do," he said.

Elspeth read to the baby, played Mozart to its tiny ears, studied relaxation, fitness, nutrition, and the techniques of birthing preferred by French women and Italians, Nigerians and those from Chad. She took vitamins and sang in the shower, lathered her belly with soap ordered in from Montreal, stood quite naked in front of the mirror and enjoyed the rounding of her body, the angles that were disappearing beneath her new and sensual curves. And if with every softening of her temper and frame Harold grew more distant, ever more like his mother with every word he said, well it all stood to reason when you considered he was being replaced in the world.

"You," Elspeth murmured to her son, still sleepy from the anesthetic on the night that he was born, "will achieve so much." And she kissed his cheek before the nurse took him to the nursery, no doubt to fatten his belly with the formula science had proven so much better for babies than a mother's milk. "So much to achieve," Elspeth whispered as she sank back beneath the folds of sleep again, her husband at work, her head full of plans.

 **three**

"I swear by Eshna, you will not come near me again!" Hetta yelled, gritting her teeth before she bore down again, pushing at the goddamn stubborn child in her body with all of her might.

"Almost there," Ardan Dex assured her, patting her hand where it gripped his arm. There'd be bruises by morning. "One more push and – "

"I swear," Hetta said, throwing back her head, trying to draw breath into her lungs. "I will cut off your cock myself and . . . ." She grimaced and folded her body, knees to chest, muscles tense as she urged her child to just, please, _leave_.

"So close, Madam Dex," said the midwife at Hetta's feet. "One more, one more – "

"Haaaate," Hetta growled as she bore down with all she had, felt her son finally – _thankfully_ – slither free, granting her the relief of pain's blissful absence. "Oh god," she said gratefully, "oh god, oh god," and as her child began to cry – lusty howls from excellent lungs – she felt laughter curl mischievously in her belly, turned her face to accept her dashna's kiss. "Ardan," she said, tugging at his hair with a tearful grin. "A boy? Is it a boy?"

"A boy," said the midwife, wrapping their son in a welcoming blanket, the pattern of his clan woven into the cloth. "A son for your family, a blessing on your house," and Hetta howled with laughter at the very idea that a son was more or less precious than the three girls sleeping at her mother's compound that night; that they wanted a boy for any reason other than Jennit had ordered them deliver one, as if being the eldest child gave her control over such matters. Ardan laughed too, a rumbling mirth that was utter delight, lifted the baby from the midwife's arms and set him at Hetta's breast.

"Ronon?" he asked. "I know you wanted a Ronon."

Hetta arranged the baby against her body with the confidence of a mother baptized many times over, checking his fingers and toes, glancing at his belly, kissing his forehead and wrinkling her nose at his scrunched-up eyes. "You're done with that foolish Eenet business?" she asked.

"Fourteen hours of labor earns you anything you want," Ardan teased.

"Ha!" Hetta said, grabbing him by his long, dark hair, pulling him in and kissing him on the mouth, releasing him so that she might stare at their son again. "He looks like a Ronon. He has the chin." She grinned up at her dashna. "Good name for a boy or a girl."

Ardan roared with laughter, startling Ronon, who wailed with the gusto for which Dexes were known. "Apologies, son," Ardan said, pulling up a chair and running a gentle finger over Ronon's downy head. "But you should grow used to laughter," he counseled. "It's your birthright, you know; the gift of your kin."

 **four**

Patrick's mother suggested a nanny would solve the problem. " _She_ can get up with him during the night," she said. "Get some rest! You can't let the child dictate your life forever, Miriam."

But Miriam merely smiled into her teacup, John asleep in a bassinet by her feet, and when Eileen Sheppard suggested that perhaps she was needed at home, that Miriam was doing fine by herself, that if she needed anything, anything at all, she only had to ask, Miriam didn't protest that she should stay.

The other mothers she knew had counseled it would be lonely, to stay behind while Patrick went overseas, to be responsible for a baby with no family close by. But Miriam didn't find it such – John had been her company for so long, a somnolent weight, heavy in her belly as she painted his bedroom and hung her own art on the walls; she was used to rising in the night because his elbow or head had ground into her bladder. It wasn't so different to get up because he cried.

And while Eileen Sheppard might lament the pallor of her daughter-in-law's skin, think the bags beneath her eyes a sin against family and society both, Miriam counted them accomplishments, offset by the sound of her infant son's laugh. She relished nighttime conversation, starlight glinting beyond John's bedroom window as she set him on her hip, swayed with him beneath the moon's bright beam, told him stories of the faraway places she'd been to, heard of; the ideas and conventions she'd outgrown when she stepped into Asia, Africa, Europe's ports; the possibilities that he would live to see, touch with his hands, coax to life.

Perhaps most important, night was when shooting stars graced the heavens, when it seemed that a person might spread their wings and fly from care directly toward some distant light. "John," Miriam whispered as he laid his infant head upon her shoulder. "John, my darling. Fly from here, fly."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Hope, Duty, Pride, Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/117975) by [sheafrotherdon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon)




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